Brazilian Police Urged to Act Against Anti-jewish Terrorists

January 25, 1963

RIO DE JANEIRO (Jan. 24)

A leading Brazilian daily newspaper sharply condemned today the recent outbreak of attacks against a number of Jewish owned business and a Jewish community center in Salvador, the capital of Bahia province. In an editorial published in O Jornal do Rio de Janeiro, the paper called for vigorous action by the police in putting an end to such attacks, the first anti-Jewish outbreaks ever to have occurred in Bahia.

Brazilian police suspect an organized group of anti-Semitic terrorists are responsible for the incidents in which the Jewish establishments were fired on by persons armed with hunting rifles. Some 500 Jewish families live in Salvador.

Noting that similar attacks had been quickly stamped out in other areas by energetic police action and the pressure of public opinion, the paper called for equally energetic police action against the terrorists responsible for the Salvador attacks, “who have been led astray by false prejudice against a people and a race which had contributed much to the progress of humanity.”